Analysis: Futuristic Chinese military unit most likely behind balloon campaign

KATSUJI NAKAZAWA

Source Link

Spy balloons continue to dominate the headlines. The latest news from the White House is that the most recent three unmanned objects that the U.S. has shot down may have had a commercial or otherwise benign purpose.

The Chinese government has said that the first -- a 60-meter-high balloon that flew over the entire U.S. -- was a "civilian unmanned airship" from China. Beijing said its purpose was weather observation and strongly protested its downing by a F-22 fighter.

The fierce disagreement over balloons between the U.S. and China is not limited to areas close to the continental U.S.

National security analysts believe that a futuristic unit of the People's Liberation Army, created on the order of Chinese President Xi Jinping, could be behind the operations.

Created in 2015, as part of a major PLA reorganization, the secretive Strategic Support Force (SSF) is a theater command-level organization established to centralize the PLA's strategic space, cyberspace, electronic, information, communications and psychological warfare missions and capabilities, according to a Pentagon report to the U.S. Congress.

U.S. Navy divers recovered a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on Feb. 5 after it was downed by a missile fired by a U.S. F-22 jet interceptor. © U.S. Navy/Kyodo

Its most important theater looks to be the South China Sea, where the unit conducts warning and surveillance alongside information gathering activities. Balloons fit into this picture, and in early 2021 there was a related incident.

When the aircraft carrier group USS Theodore Roosevelt and its escort ships conducted freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, passing close to military installations that China was establishing in the waters, Beijing undertook its own countermeasures.

Flying high above the carrier strike group was a spy balloon gathering information about every American move. It was likely detected by the U.S. fleet.

The South China Sea spreads south of Hainan Island, where the PLA is gradually establishing an important military presence. The country's navy, air force and rocket force have presences on the island supporting an aircraft carrier, naval ships, submarines, aircraft and rockets.

An MH-60S Sea Hawk lands aboard the USS Nimitz on Feb.12 while the U.S. 7th Fleet aircraft carrier conducted operations in the South China Sea. © U.S. Navy/AP

In 2001, a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. Navy electronic surveillance plane collided in midair above the South China Sea. The American plane had to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The mid-air collision left the Chinese pilot dead and developed into a major international issue.

The SSF is shrouded in mystery, but one glimpse of the scope of its mission was offered in a 2016 article in the Global Times, an English-language newspaper affiliated to the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party.

The Global Times article said the SSF comprises three units with different functions: the cyberwarfare unit, which defends against hacking attacks; the space warfare unit, which has jurisdiction over spy satellites and China's own BeiDou Navigation Satellite System; and the electronic warfare unit, which disrupts enemy radar systems and communications.

The huge balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina was equipped with antennas believed to be related to intercepting communications, hinting at its connection to the SSF.

Hainan is also home to important Chinese satellite launch facilities. The base, situated in Wenchang, is in an area known to be an SSF stronghold.

Recently, there have been signals that the SSF is expanding with the appearance of online personnel recruitment advertisements.

The force is recruiting university graduates and those with higher educational backgrounds, as well as high school and vocational school graduates for relatively low-level jobs related to information technology.

The hiring process is surprisingly open, recruiting young talent just as private companies do. Indeed, the SSF is a symbol of "military-civilian integration," a signature policy of Xi.

Xi inspected the SSF in August 2016 with a visit widely covered in the state media.

The SSF's background dates from 1999 when a book titled "Unrestricted Warfare" written by two colonels in the PLA appeared. That presented the idea of mobilizing all aspects of society -- politics, economics, culture, ideology and psychology -- as nonmilitary weapons. This concept provided the foundation for the SSF.

A Pentagon report to Congress described the SSF performing missions and tasks in a framework of "three warfares" -- public opinion warfare, psychological warfare and legal warfare.

The U.S. expects that in a Taiwan emergency, China's cyberwarfare unit will attempt to launch psychological warfare operations in an attempt to influence public opinion in Taiwan.

A woman in a Beijing gallery looks at a propaganda painting of a Chinese air base built on an artificial island in the South China Sea. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)

While China's insistence that it was an unintended entry of a "civilian airship" is disingenuous, Beijing's claim that the airship was for weather observation does have substance -- weather always has important implications for military operations. Weather conditions always need to be factored in because these impact the success or failure of a rocket launch, the accuracy of a missile firing and the effectiveness of shelling.

In China, laws and regulations clearly stipulate that the Central Military Commission, which is headed by Xi as its chairman, oversees weather issues related to military affairs. Since the military reform of 2015, the SSF is thought to have assumed this responsibility.

The operation of large, high-tech balloons is also an important task for the military, according to analysts. After building massive artificial islands in the South China Sea through land reclamation, balloons have been seen in the sky.

Remnants of a large Chinese spy balloon over the North Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina after being hit by a missile from a U.S. F-22 jet interceptor on Feb. 4. © Chad Fish/AP

Balloons have plenty of warfare history. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army launched numerous balloons with incendiary bombs attached toward the U.S. mainland, causing some fires there. They came to be commonly known as "balloon bombs" after the war.

Students were mobilized to make these weapons. The first balloon bomb was released from Kujukuri in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo, in 1944. Some 9,000 balloon bombs in all were launched from various parts of Japan, but the U.S. imposed a strict media blackout on any damage they caused. With no way to measure the effect of this silent airborne offensive, Japan halted the balloon campaign halfway through.

Developments in recent weeks have underlined the danger of balloons triggering unintended consequences. As unmanned balloons and unmanned high-tech aircraft replace piloted aircraft, the risk of accidental clashes may increase.

While unmanned craft are more liable to drift off course, the difficulty of shooting down ultrahigh altitude flying objects may encourage their operators to be more daring. The moves already seem provocative in the eyes of other countries.

Painting of a fighter jet being prepared for launch from the Liaoning, China's first aircraft carrier.

Even if the balloon's overflight was a mistake, as the Chinese maintain, Beijing did not bother to notify the U.S. when the balloon intruded into American airspace.

Instead, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Feb. 13 that the U.S. has flown balloons into Chinese airspace without permission more than 10 times in the past year. The U.S. government has strongly denied the claim.

China also announced that it detected an unidentified flying object over the sea off Shandong Province.

The danger of an accidental clash between the U.S. and China lies not only in the South China Sea but around Taiwan as well. Fanning this danger is stalling diplomacy.

The first face-to-face meeting between Xi and U.S. President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last November started a process of establishing guardrails.

That process was interrupted by the balloon incident, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceling his planned visit to China. Attention is now focused on whether Wang Yi, China's top diplomat, can sit down with Blinken in Germany. Much might depend on that rumored meeting.